


Truffes noires d'hiver

by Unovis



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Food, Historical, M/M, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 17:44:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unovis/pseuds/Unovis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A myth, a tall tale, and a meal.<br/>Not the nicest view of anyone; but Immortals have a different sense of humor, I suppose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truffes noires d'hiver

**Author's Note:**

> Truffes noires d'hiver (Black Winter Truffles)

_Since, during storms, flames leap from the humid vapors and dark clouds emit deafening noises, is it surprising the lightning, when it strikes the ground, gives rise to truffles?_ \-- Plutarch

 _The most learned men have been questioned as to the nature of this tuber, and after two thousand years of argument and discussion their answer is the same as it was on the first day: we do not know. The truffles themselves have been interrogated, and have answered simply: Eat us and praise the Lord._ \--Alexandre Dumas

~Paris, 1845~

It was a bright November day. The sky was white. The trees were black and glistening. The air smelled of iron and stone. It was a day waiting to be written on, to be carved, to receive staves and notes.

The author looked out on it from his window seat, from a room of fading colors, with impatient greed. His host refilled his cup with coffee. The host was a sleek cavalier with large, long hands, an authoritative nose, and forest eyes. The author was a great and storied man. The one had money, the other, need of it.

“I want you to help me seduce a priest.”

The author rumpled in disbelief: he pursed his lips, wrinkled his brow, shrugged his shoulders; his waistcoat frowned. “With what allures?” He paused in thought. “With speeches?”

The host wrapped his hands around his cup. “With food. He’s thin. He’s thin, in need of nourishment. He’s starved himself of beauty and the world.”

“And of you?” The question was pointed, the eyes were moist and mild.

“Oof, me. He’s surfeited of me. He’s known me too well and for too long. No, food is the answer _maître_ , food before all else. I bow at your feet.” He inclined his head to sketch a bow. He licked a drop of milk from the rim of his cup with a delicate tongue.

The author’s morality was broad, if irregularly deep. “A priest. How long a priest? How much a man?”

“Longer a man, I would have said before today. He’s shorter, now. The priest may have eaten him.”

The author, a veteran of many coffees with unpublished novelists, sighed. “You stun me with metaphor. Shall we speak plainly? You would like to treat your priest friend to a hearty meal, with expectations best unexplored. You come to me for recipes? Recommendations?”

“For the meal, _dominé_! To cook the meal. I will write the abduction…”

“Abduction, now?”

“The scenario, to lure him from his church. He leaves his holy precinct with extreme reluctance.”

“So: your scenario, my menu?”

“No mere menu. The honor of a meal cooked by your hands. You or no one.” His look sharpened and the author squeezed his thumb and fingers together under the table.

“For this dubious honor—and I have not agreed—what will you offer?”

The cavalier smiled. The author believed at that moment that he could happily be paid in character, in the challenge of writing this man. Women would swoon. Men would sharpen their swords. Gold would roll into his purse.

“Black diamonds.”

The author frowned again. He was no jewel broker. “From Africa?”

“From Périgord.” The man reached into the pocket of his coat, hanging from his chair, and brought out a bulging pouch. He stretched open its mouth and the air was perfumed with vegetable musk. “Six,” he said, and withdrew the number of specimens, each the size of a pheasant’s head. “Three for the meal, three for your good self. And expenses, of course.”

“Done,” said the author. His mouth watered.

“Carefully,” said his host, with a dry smile. “A man died for those.”

~Paris, 1998~

“Two birds with one stone.” Methos shrugged. “He did it for centuries. Each produced barely a kilo, each tree was viable for around thirty years, but he was a patient man.”

“Wait,” said Duncan. He’d listened with half an ear to the rambling anecdote. Half charmed by the voice alone, half occupied by winter thoughts. Joe leaned across the bar, rag in one hand, glass in the other. Methos perched on a stool, elbows on his knees, spinning one of his tales into the darkened space.

“He’d heard the myth and decided to test it out. You had to admire his thoroughness.”

“Say again: He killed Immortals…”

“Challenged and killed. He fought them under oak trees for their Quickenings, on land he owned. Became quite a magnet, during his time.”

“Chastain? Chastain the madman?” He’d heard of him; he’d avoided him, on Darius’s express command.

“Chastain the Gourmand,” said Methos.

“Crazy Chastain? He disappeared in ‘42,” said Joe. Methos cocked an eyebrow at him and Joe’s fingers twitched. “You know anything about that?”

“Can’t say I do,” said Methos. “At any rate, it took me a long time to figure out what he was doing. A long time and a burnt hand.”

“But it’s a myth,” said Joe. “He was crazy?”

“Like a fox.”

“You’re telling us that lightning really does—that Quickenings can create…”

“Truffles,” said Methos. “Or they did for Chastain. He’d set up his own oak orchard, a gustatory killing field. Frightening looking place. You’ve heard how the ground where truffles grow has a blasted, scorched look? Imagine a whole grove like that, acres of it. Imagine Quickening after Quickening, Challenge after Challenge, fought under the oaks. Tricky business, not to set the trees on fire. I never saw how he managed it.”

“You’re pulling my wooden leg,” scoffed Joe.

“Scout’s honor.”

“Poppycock. His Watchers would have known.”

Methos picked at the label of his bottle. “Bribed or blind or buried. He was known to traffick in truffles. Selectively. There were rumors he’d learned how to cultivate them, since the 1700s. No one knew how. Ever wonder why the quality of truffles declined so steeply after the war?” 

Duncan doubted Joe had wasted brain power on the subject. Fitz had. Fitz knew Chastain, a small memory whispered. But, “Burned forests. Dead men.” Duncan was not in the mood for frivolity on the war.

“Dead hogs, poisoned ground, yes. And a marked reduction in Quickenings in the Périgord region, following the death of Chastain.” 

“Death?”

“Departure. Don’t look at me. Why would I kill the goose who lays the golden _truffes_?”

“Who would?” asked Duncan. 

“So, wild old Chastain was the Johnny Appleseed of gourmet fungi?”

“Of the finest kind of finest kinds. Their flavor and aroma were unsurpassed.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Duncan.

“Who would be enlightened, eat a corpse,” said Methos.

~***~

The tavern’s wine cellar, its crypt, was Holy Ground. Methos swore it to Darius, kneeling. “I always tell the truth when I’m on my knees.”

“Extreme Unction?” asked Darius.

“Beyond extreme; highly unctious,” said Methos. His hat, with its fashionably high crown, threw an executioner’s shadow on the wall. As Darius sank into himself, Methos extended into life. His charm this season was theatrical. “A memorial. A last rite for your former student. A dinner,” he threw in, offhand. “I would sprinkle your path to the place with holy water; but I hope you’d trust me, Father, this short way.”

“I do not immure myself from fear,” said Darius, absently. The sun was setting above the rooftops, through his narrow window. He had not left his church’s environs for at least a decade. Two? For an insignificant period. He’d feared Simon was dead. Methos had disliked him, the idea of him, of any student he’d taken on. 

Jealous.

That was a thought unworthy of Darius and his ancient friend. Their passion had died to ashes a century ago. “Ask for yourself,” said Darius, nevertheless.

“For myself, for your company. For Simon, in his memory. A meal he would have loved, conceived and prepared by his favorite author. It’s a rare tribute I took great trouble to arrange.”

“Yes,” said Darius. In Simon’s honor. In honor of Methos’s amends.

There were more torches en route, attached to the carriage, than Darius thought necessary. They traveled, as far as he could tell, into the forests outside the city, to a rustic looking inn. The coachman and the driver were conspicuously armed. No dainty wife would have been closer guarded. The inn was emptied, for their use alone. The wine cellar was ancient, pagan, and yet still thrummed with holy presence. Wine had kept it sanctified, Darius thought, with his old Roman sense. He would accept a cup here with respect.

He recognized the author. Simon would have been honored. Duncan would have beamed with pleasure. Fitzhugh would have kissed his ring, picked his pocket, and been seated at table with knife in hand and napkin tucked before Methos had finished his introduction. The writer stared at Darius on their intruduction. His dislike of clergy was well known. Methos, Methos, Methos. What had he done?

The cellar was warmly lit, fragrant with dried sausages, wine, and herbs. Over and under and around wreathed another scent. Darius’s nose was thin and fine. His palate was dry. But the clear soup was divine, a sluice of flavor that warmed his throat and opened his eyes. Veal, he tasted veal, and earth and mushrooms and a bitter underlying promise of spring. The soup was followed by a trout in jelly, flesh white and flaking under ice. There were a dozen plump oysters, briny and voluptuous between his teeth. Methos winked at him, tipping a shell to his lips, and Darius flushed. Simon. Simon would have enjoyed this so. Taste on taste, texture on texture—creamed spinach, a cheek of boar, potatoes duchesse, a widowed pheasant, and a small terrined paté sitting shyly to one side. The last were decorated lavishly with black cutouts of succulent, fragrant, _truffe noire_. The final course was a whole truffle soaked in wine and cooked in paper, thickly sliced, drizzled with olive oil and bitter orange. 

The wines were light and teasing, deep and rich. Darius kept his head, sampled sparingly. Methos…he’d never seen Methos the worse for wine, but Methos was affected. He glowed. His lips were moist and red.

“Tell me,” said Methos, spiking a gleaming black slice with his dagger; “Tell me,” he said, bringing the slice to Darius’s lips; “Tell me exactly what this tastes like. And I’ll count it a kiss.”

“Only a kiss?” said Darius. His lips brushed the dark fragment as he spoke. His tongue kept decently behind his teeth. “Is a kiss worth a prayer, then?”

“Less about prayer, Priest. A kiss. To me. To any part of me you pressed in the past.”

“Was my affection so rare?”

“Precious, Father.” He tapped the speared truffle against the pale lower lip. “Black. Gold.”

“This meal was not about you,” Darius reminded him. “For Simon, in Simon’s honor. And like Simon, the taste is beyond description.”

“In Simon’s indescribable honor. You owe me a kiss,” said Methos. His eyes were bright. “In memory.” He bit and chewed, and Darius took up his own fork. Bite followed intoxicating bite. Simon’s presence flowed around them, Darius imagined. An ardor of charity bloomed in his breast. Methos smiled like the devil, smiled and chewed and drank and feasted on Darius’s look.

~***~

“Once,” said Methos. “Just once, as a bet.”

“Whose?” Duncan tossed a pebble into the Seine. At his side, Methos huddled into his overcoat. 

“An old rival. Fed to an old lover.”

“Did he—could he tell?”

“Oh, yes,” said Methos.

***

**Author's Note:**

> The best black truffles are called Périgord, whether or not they come from that area of France. They grow under the top soil above the roots of certain trees, especially oak trees. Black truffles are dark brown on the outside and a deep purple to black inside, marbled with white. They have a highly individual aroma and taste. Decreasing in numbers every year since the 1800s, and very steeply in France following WWII, they’ve resisted cultivation for millennia.  
> Alexandre Dumas was chronically short of money and distrusted the clergy from his youth. He was an epicure who was known to invade the kitchen of an inn when he was traveling, to take over and cook for his party. His Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine was published after his death.
> 
> Re-post. A very slightly different version of this was written for the 2010 hlh_shortcuts holiday fest, for fuzzytale. Great appreciation to my doughty beta Carenejeans, for suffering through my usual fest dither.


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